


Parade (they say it's your birthday)

by Letterblade



Category: Xenosaga
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, M/M, Religious Themes & References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:46:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was the carpenter's boy. Splinters in his hands. Running wild in the foothills at the edge of the village, brown and sweating under the blazing sun, as the other boys pointed at his white hair and laughed. Old man, they called him. Freak. Born in a barn...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parade (they say it's your birthday)

**Author's Note:**

> Am I the only one who thinks that Jin and chaos were kind of acting like an old couple near the beginning of Xenosaga II?

_He was the carpenter's boy. Splinters in his hands. Running wild in the foothills at the edge of the village, brown and sweating under the blazing sun, as the other boys pointed at his white hair and laughed. Old man, they called him. Freak. Born in a barn. Shot up wiry but never grew a beard. His mother would pray on the mountain, dark hair curling over her face, hiding her eyes that looked nothing like his. She would tell him that he was born under a shining star. That rich travelers had visited, showered him with gifts. That one had white hair, just like him, and eyes the color of blood oranges._

_His mad mother, who said she'd been a virgin when he was born._

_Sometimes when he planed wood for his father, the knife would slip in his gawky young grip, slice his palm, and he could swear for a moment, in the sunlight shafting through the golden dust in the air, that his blood shone white..._

* * *

There's a hand on his back.

chaos wakes with a little jolt, takes a calming breath, settles. His face is full of bunched and worn fabric, smelling of cotton and soap and rice wine and Jin. Sweaty Jin.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

Jin's big, callused hand runs up his back and ruffles his hair. He's lying on his back, with chaos curled up against his side. Probably lying awake and staring at the ceiling, thinking of old ghosts and lost wisdom, knowing Jin. He's got one hand resting on his sheathed sword, left on the very edge of the mattress by the wall, touching it for comfort. Morning light comes in the window, and the tiny golden motes dancing there are nanomachines, glinting busily, not sweet-smelling wood dust at all.

Jin lets chaos untuck himself, and they both stretch, Jin like a runner before a race, chaos like a tired cat. He's relaxed to the bone. He's always liked Jin's style, honest-to-god natural fibers and all, soft cotton sheets wrapped around his bare skin; he misses natural sometimes. Jin's in his sleeping shirt, but chaos is naked except for his gloves, and he fiddles with their wrist straps as Jin putters out of bed, shoves the half-empty sake bottle to the back of the nightstand, and goes for the water instead.

"How's your head?" chaos asks.

"Not bad. You?"

"I'm fine." Doesn't bother adding that he never gets hangovers; by now, he's been pretending to be human for so long that it's easy to lie, even in bed.

"Well, anyway." Jin shoves a glass of water into his hands. "There you go."

* * *

_His hands would shine white in the sun._

_He was a lanky young man, walking pilgrimage to a temple. Stopping at a well, standing with a pitcher of water so big he had to hold it like a baby, and his hands would shine white in the sun and the water would run wine red._

_There was a blind man at the gate. Begging in a broken voice, never-ending, for how could he know when a kind eye would pass? He would kneel and give him bread, shaking with sympathy, and his hands would shine white in the sun and his crusted eyes would open._

_A man had died, and his hands would shine white in the sun..._

* * *

Jin sits on the bed next to him, and they drink water in silence, washing away morning breath and the aftertaste of alcohol.

"It's late," Jin says. "You need to be back at the _Elsa_ anytime soon?"

"We won't be leaving Second Miltia until tomorrow." chaos shrugs gently. "I'd like to get back to her sometime today, because I promised to help Hammer with tuning one of the sensors, but I can stay here for a while yet."

"Well, give them my regards when you go."

"Will do. You going to ship out with us again?"

"Soon, probably. I need to go through some of the data I've already gathered first."

Jin finishes his water, sets it aside, and runs his hand up chaos' arm, lets chaos wrap around him, and kisses him, slow and pondering.

"You know, chaos," he says softly when they're done, "you don't exactly have to pretend you're human."

chaos smiles wryly, barely worried even though it's the first time Jin has so much as mentioned it. "Maybe I do."

"I've known you for nearly fifteen years, and you haven't aged one bit, old man." Jin ruffles his hair. "And you've been Canaan's co-pilot, and I know he flies like a maniac. I'm not going to say I know what you're hiding, or what you even are--Realian or whatever else. I'm just saying that I don't particularly mind that you aren't human."

"Thanks. What brings this on?"

"You talk in your sleep."

"Nothing embarrassing, I hope."

"Didn't know you were a carpenter's kid." Jin picks up his gloved hand, folds it between both of his. "Dangerous thing to say. I'll hit you up for help with the woodshed."

"I'd be glad to."

* * *

_She picks up his hand, folds it between both of hers. They're soft and slender and very warm, and his skin tingles at her touch._

_She has his mother's name, and they laugh about it. Her eyes are as blue as the morning sky. She'd heard about him, she said. She'd heard he'd been working miracles. And did he ever think, she asked, that he'd been chosen? That some strange power, part of the very universe itself, was running through him?_

_Their hands glowed white. Her maiden friend ran up laughing beside them, and when they made love, the world nearly shook apart..._

* * *

"You also haven't taken your gloves off in fifteen years."

"Well." chaos shrugs lightly. "They're good gloves."

"I remember you telling me once--not to take them off."

"Maybe I'm the girl with the red ribbon."

"The who?"

chaos lies back, legs in Jin's lap. "It's an old story. There was a girl who wore a red ribbon around her neck, tied with a little bow. She'd had it for as long as she could remember, she liked to say. She met a boy one day, and he asked her to take it off, and she said no. They held hands, and fell in love, and every night he'd ask her if she would take off the ribbon, and she would say no, it wasn't time. They married, and he stopped asking. Settled down and had children, and she wore it every moment, asleep, bathing, having sex, all the time. And their children grew up, and every once in a while he'd ask if it was time yet, and she'd laugh and say it wasn't."

Jin rubs rough fingers along his shins, walks his hand up to rest on chaos' bare belly.

"Stubborn girl."

"Well, it still wasn't time."

"What's the right time to take off a ribbon, then?"

"They'd grown old. Had grandchildren. They retired, started fading away, dying peacefully. And then, one bright and sunny day, she held his hand and said that it was time to take the ribbon off. So he did."

"What happened?"

"Her head fell off."

Jin blinked and shifted.

"That's unpleasant."

"Well. She was finally ready for it."

"Ready to die?"

"Better than not being ready, don't you think?" chaos pauses, closes his eyes for a moment. "Death, if you're ready..."

"I'm a soldier." Jin says quietly. "I know."

* * *

_Iron. Iron in his hands, driving through skin, blood, bones, breaking him open like the scrubbed-out goat bladders full of water that the butcher's children would throw at each other. His hands glowed white. She was crying, she and her beloved maid, somewhere beneath where he hung in agony. There was blood dripping into his eyes, and he knew. Right then he knew._

_Some strange power, part of the very fabric of reality, running through him. Anima. Alpha and omega; life and death. The universal failsafe._

_He hadn't even realized it until then. Until he, slowly, died._

_Three days later, he woke up and left, blood dripping from his hands, because he was part of the very universe, untouchable, living forever._

* * *

"Whoa." Jin's wandered up to the window, bare-legged, and pulled the curtains properly. "There's a parade out there."

"Really?" chaos wanders up as well, not particularly caring that he's naked. "What's that for?"

They peer out at the street, at the revelers winding by, swinging silver stars and green branches. They're singing, he thinks, but he can't hear them from here.

Jin thumbs a switch on his computer terminal near the window and pulls up a calendar.

"Oh, Christmas."

"Christmas." He almost manages to make it a question. It's been a while since he knew anyone who celebrated.

Jin shrugs. "It's an Immigrant Fleet thing. One of their old holidays. Nobody really seems to know what it's about anymore, though they say it goes way back. I guess they just like to party."

"And there's enough transplanted Fleet descendants from Miltia to make a parade?"

"In this city? Sure." Jin's quiet for a moment. "Pellegri used to celebrate. Still does, I suppose. She'd say I had to give her presents. I always figured she was making that bit up so I'd spoil her. Though the Colonel did it too..."

chaos puts a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"I'm getting maudlin," Jin says dryly, because he likes to pretend that nothing ever hurts him. "Drinking with you is a bad habit."

"Everybody gets to be maudlin sometimes." chaos kisses him somewhere near his ear, brushing a gloved hand over thick and tangled hair. "As long as they don't write poetry about it."

"Oh, believe me, I've got haiku that will never see the light of day."

"Do you still miss them?"

Jin's silent for a moment, then turns and pulls chaos against his chest. He's all wiry strength, soldier's muscle, solid and warm. "Don't take the ribbon off my neck just yet, old man."

chaos laughs, soft and sad, into Jin's nightshirt. Jin rubs fingers over the old scar on his lower back, little jagged line--exit wound of a spear blade, not that he'd ever asked.

"It's actually my birthday," chaos says after a moment.

"Hm?"

"Today."

"Oh. Happy birthday. Well, I suppose you get a holiday for it."

chaos listens to Jin's heartbeat, ducks his head so Jin can't see his wry smile. "Kind of embarrassing, that. I'm not a birthday sort of guy."

"Me neither."

chaos folds his hands at the back of Jin's neck, hands with the power to dissolve the universe lurking under his gloves, and looks up, shrugging off the weight of the distant, distant past. "Then," he says, and kisses him lightly, "let's go find breakfast."


End file.
